


VTN_Files

by orphan_account



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Illuminae Files AU, M/M, Space Horror
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-27
Updated: 2017-02-27
Packaged: 2018-09-27 08:42:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9988205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: The Galra have followed the Kerberos spacecraft back to Earth. Four months later, they launch an attack against the Galaxy Garrison. Beams rain down from the sky, and to most cadets, it seems like the end.Except for the few hundred refugees that escaped to the Castle of Lions. The wormhole generator has been destroyed, leaving them on a three month journey to Arus while a Galran fleet chases them across the universe. An attack is imminent, and deep within the inner workings of the Castle, the AI meant to protect them may become their greatest threat.Told through a collection of recovered documents, the story follows Pidge's mission to uncover the truth. When allies are needed, joining old teammates, a hothead, and the newly promoted Commander Shiro may be what it takes to bring it all to light. Together, they'll do anything to arrive at their destination alive. Or risk dying alone in the emptiness of space.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thanks to my beta and online mom, eerieyoko! I love you <3 <3
> 
> As said in the summary, this story is told through a collection of recovered documents. Don't think of the chapters as "chapters", really, because that would be untrue. Each chapter break is intended to mark the end of a file. Two dashes "--" is placed beneath the chapter breaks for readers that use apps such as Codex Reader, where chapter breaks do not show up in the downloaded document. 
> 
> This is my first Voltron fic, so I'm a little nervous. But I hope you all like it! Enjoy!

**[Draft]  
** **To:  
** **From:  
** **Subject: Galra Invasion of Earth**

90% of space is empty. But I hope this finds its way into someone’s hands eventually.

If you’ve recovered this file, please spend a bit of time to read through everything attached at the bottom of this e-mail. To compress file size, all videos and recorded conversations have been converted to footage summary and transcripts. All you’re going to be opening here are thousands of .txt files.

It should be noted that some of the files are corrupted. There was a virus not too long ago, so if a file doesn’t load, just skip it over and continue. I’m sure you’re smart enough to figure out what happened between two entries in the dossier.

Sincerely,

Katie Holt

Attached:  **invasion_dossier.zip (762.6 MB)**

* * *

\--

 **Footage from CAM2B4, CAM2B5, CAMD8, CAMD9, AND CAMG37  
** **07/25/74  
** **EARTH**

The footage opens at 2:00 AM. Subject is Lance McClain, a seventeen year-old pilot in training and self-proclaimed ‘tailor’. He has no idea he’s being watched. CAM2B4 is hidden in a corner, merely a button-sized dot in the shadows. The camera is on night mode, so it’s streaming in green and grainy footage that makes it hard to pick up details. Fortunately, they aren’t necessary. Lance is a very expressive person.

He paces around his dorm, arms gesturing wildly. He’s talking to himself, voice raising in volume the longer he goes. The audio is somewhat distorted, but certain words come out clear, like “Keith”, or “pilot”, or “Garrison”.

Six hours prior, his longtime rival was kicked from the Galaxy Garrison for insubordination. And although Lance is now the best pilot among the cadets his age, something about it doesn’t feel right. He wanted to look down on his rival, to revel in his victory over finally beating him. There’s nothing satisfying in winning by default.

At 2:26 AM, a shrill alarm interferes with the audio and his words become completely inaudible. Lance turns around in a circle, hands covering his ears as he shouts into the noise. When the alarm doesn’t shut off after a few seconds, his eyes widen and he slips on his shoes, throws on his jacket, and sprints out of his room.

CAM2B5 captures his frantic escape. Lance bursts into the hallway as the first blast hits, shaking the foundations of the building. He grabs his doorframe to avoid crashing to the ground. Cadets are everywhere, tripping over each other to make it to their designated bunkers before the building collapses around them.

A cadet slams into him as the second explosion goes off, knocking him away from his door and into the crowd. Then he’s gone, sucked into the chaos and impossible to tell apart from anyone else.

He’s seen again breaking off into a separate corridor. Unlike Lance, the few people here are running towards the main hall, not away from it. He stops for a moment and looks over his shoulder. As shown in his flight simulator scores, his confident and impulsive behavior has both solved and caused problems. Lance is far from stupid, but he doesn’t always think before he acts. Now he’s thinking, weighing his options. What’s safer? Going out through the nearby fire escape, or heading to the bunkers where there will most likely be a wait before he can get inside safely?

Lance doesn’t turn around. He runs toward the fire escape, stumbling into the wall as another explosion rocks the building. He catches himself and then takes off again.

The next camera is outdoors. The angle is very limiting, looking down at the fire escape door in black-and-white. Clearly, not enough happens here for it to be considered an area of interest to Garrison security. The door is thrown open, slamming against the wall. Lance jumps outside. He looks both ways before deciding to head left and starts to run again.

CAMG37 is another camera positioned on the Garrison’s exterior walls. However, this angle can see the full view of the chaos outside. Three massive, purple ships float in the night sky, raining down laser blasts and destruction on the surface below. Fighter jets zip around the Garrison, shooting out its defenses and attacking its structural supports.

It only takes Lance a second to come up with a plan of action. Instead of retreating back inside the building, he distances himself from it, running straight toward the enemy invaders. Whether or not this is a good idea is up to debate, but there’s definitely some logic behind it. The invaders are attacking the building itself, and while they are killing off civilians, hunting them down certainly doesn’t appear to be their priority.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t some cruel motherfuckers doing it, though.

Lance stops dead in his tracks when a fighter jet lowers before him, seeming to float in mid-air. That shouldn’t be possible, but it’s alien tech, so trying to make sense of it is a waste of time. His back is to the camera, figure small in the distance. It looks like it’s the end for him. Maybe ditching the bunkers wasn’t such a good idea after all.

The jet’s canon begins to glow, pointed straight at the human in front of it. It glows brighter and brighter, overexposing the video and making everything impossible to see in the whiteness. Lance is a silhouette in the center star, arms raised as a peace offering.

The cannon fires just as a white space pod descends from the sky and lands right on top of Lance. A particle barrier around the pod shields it from the blast, shattering immediately after. The jet prepares to fire again, but then the white pod lifts off and disappears, out of sight.

There’s a small crater where the pod used to be. Lance isn’t in it. He’s gone.

The video only ends a few minutes later. Before it finishes, a large, white spaceship descends from the sky, barrier up and blasting the alien ships with blue beams of bright light. Hundreds of small, white pods shoot out from its body, racing down to the surface of the Earth to pick up whatever humans it can.

One of the large invader ships turns around and faces the angelic vessel. And then it fires.

* * *

\--

 **GALAXY** **GARRISON SPACE EXPLORATION BASE | DATE: 07/24/74 | TIME: 20:03**

**DISCHARGE REPORT**

NAME OF COMMANDER: Co. Iverson 

NAME OF CADET: Keith Kogane | AGE: 17 | CLASS: Pilot

DESCRIPTION OF INFRACTION: The subject has a long history of insubordination. Below is a list of Kogane’s most notable offenses:

  * Disciplinary infractions;
  * 19 unauthorized absences in the past year, each spanning over three days at a time;
  * Failure or outright refusal to comply with official orders;
  * Insulting superiors.



ANALYSIS OF INFRACTION: Following the recent return of the Kerberos spacecraft and personnel, we can no longer attribute Kogane’s rebellion to distrust in the Garrison. We believe it stems from personality rather than reason, as any attempts to understand or correct his behavior have been met with open hostility. These are often the times when he disappears for days at a time.

CONCLUSION: Despite his apparent talent at the helm, Keith Kogane is more of a liability than an asset to our mission. We believe he must be discharged immediately.

 **APPROVED** /Denied

* * *

\--

 **Interviewer:** Tell me how it all started.

 **Pidge Gunderson:** Where’s my father? What did you do with him?

 **Interviewer:** We’re cross-referencing current living passengers with all Galaxy Garrison personnel. It refreshes every few minutes. What’s his name again?

 **Pidge Gunderson:** Samuel Holt.

 **Interviewer:** I’ll let you know if his name appears on the casualties list. Is there a reason you have different surnames?

 **Pidge Gunderson:** It’s my mother’s name.

 **Interviewer.** All right, then. Tell me how it all started.

 **Pidge Gunderson:** How far back do you want me to go?

 **Interviewer:** Why not start at what you were doing when the invasion started?

 **Pidge Gunderson:** Okay. I was on the Garrison’s rooftop, listening for alien frequencies and communications with the tech I’d built. See, my brother and father were on the failed Kerberos mission. Well, it didn’t _really_ fail. They just arrived back on Earth two years later than they were supposed to. The Garrison announced that it was a mechanical error, but my family told me it was sabotage. Their equip was glowing some sort of purple, and their comms were cut. The work of an alien virus, no doubt.

 **Interviewer:** So, you were listening for these aliens?

 **Pidge Gunderson:** Yes! I could hear them on most nights, sending weird messages back and forth to each other. You wouldn’t believe how often they talk about lions. Maybe it means something else in their language. Anyways, they were louder than ever. There was no static, no interference. Perfectly clear. That’s when I first figured out something was wrong.

 **Interviewer:** At around what time did you start listening?

 **Pidge Gunderson:** I usually head up there at around midnight. It can take a while to lock onto their signal, though. I think I only connected half an hour later.

 **Interviewer:** Why didn’t you tell one of your commanders?

 **Pidge Gunderson:** They wouldn’t believe me. They didn’t believe my brother or father, either. Or Shirogane.

 **Interviewer:** Please continue.

 **Pidge Gunderson:** Normally I can’t hear any of my surroundings when I’m listening to the aliens. But I heard the alarms. They went off really early in the morning. I stopped what I was doing immediately—

 **Interviewer:** The alarms went off at 2:26 AM.

 **Pidge Gunderson:** Oh. Thanks. After the alarms went off, I stuffed all my equipment into my backpack and turned around to leave. Then I saw them: three huge, purple ships descending from the atmosphere. I knew without really thinking that it was the aliens that sabotaged the Kerberos mission. And they didn’t look like they came in peace.

 **Interviewer:** So what did you do?

 **Pidge Gunderson:** I found my family. Well, minus my mom. She was still at home. But my brother and father were at the Garrison.

 **Interviewer:** How did you know where to find them?

 **Pidge Gunderson:** Obviously, the entire building was chaos. After Kerberos, we’d come up with a plan in case the aliens had followed them home. If we were able to get out of the Garrison in time, we’d all meet up at a nearby rock structure—my dad had stolen one of the four-by-fours and hidden it there.

 **Interviewer:** Did you go there right away?

 **Pidge Gunderson:** It would be counter-productive to look for them. Also, I had to climb off the roof because they kept shooting at it, so I figured going inside the building under attack was a bad idea. The rock structure is a four-minute walk, barely over a minute if you sprint. Which I did.

 **Interviewer:** Was your family there?

 **Pidge Gunderson:** No, I was the first. They had to get outside through all the mayhem, so it took them a few more minutes to get there. I kept watching the invading ships as I waited. There were hundreds of them now, though much smaller than the main three ships. The smaller ones were fighter-class jets, I assume.

 **Interviewer:** The three alien ships were accompanied by a fleet of fighter jets.

 **Pidge Gunderson:** Okay. My family arrived just as this huge, white ship came down behind the purple ones. It was _massive_. It started attacking the main hostile ships, and I think it sent out rescue pods to pick up all the humans running around outside the bunkers.

 **Interviewer:** We have confirmation from the captain that yes, those were rescue pods.

 **Pidge Gunderson:** We all got in the jeep, and my dad floored it. I thought we were going to drive _away_ from the ships, but he kept going in the same direction that all the firing was coming from. I was yelling at him from the back seat, calling him crazy and stupid and asking if the alien virus on his ship had infected his head, too. What kind of moron goes _towards_ the enemy, you know?

 **Interviewer:** His decision certainly proved advantageous to you.

 **Pidge Gunderson:** I’m alive, so I guess you could say that. My dad was shouting back at me, but I couldn’t hear him. Everything else was too loud. We were right in the middle of all the chaos at that point, and the white ship had finally touched down on the planet. There was this huge shield around it. It wasn’t letting anything but the pods in and out. Probably to shield itself from all the heat it was taking.

 **Interviewer:** Then how did you get inside?

 **Pidge Gunderson:** Our jeep exploded. One of the jets started tailing us and shot out our tires. We all abandoned ship before it could crash, and the jet kept on shooting until it exploded. Now we were all stuck on the ground with no transportation, no protection, and no way inside the white ship. I’ll be honest—I thought I was going to die.

 **Interviewer:** The jet didn’t try to finish you off?

 **Pidge Gunderson:** It did. It shot my dad right in the stomach, too. Not with its cannon, but with one of the smaller blasters on its wings. That doesn’t mean he’s going to make it, though.

 **Interviewer:** Sorry. I still have no update on your father. I sent a request to the recovery teams, so they should get back to me shortly. For now, let’s continue. You were all alone, with a wounded man, and you still managed to make it on despite a jet attacking you?

 **Pidge Gunderson:** I thought we were done for. So did Matt, my brother. And then we were rescued.

 **Interviewer:** By one of the rescue pods?

 **Pidge Gunderson:** No, by Keith Kogane, some hotshot expelled from the military for disobedience.. I had no idea he’d stuck around. He was driving towards the white ship on a red hoverbike; although it was meant for one person, he let us all on. Somehow, I ended up carrying my dying father, and his weight nearly pushed me off the bike a few times. Fortunately, Keith really _is_ a good pilot, so we got to the ship without taking more damage.

 **Interviewer:** I thought you said there was a shield protecting the ship?

 **Pidge Gunderson:** There was. Do you see the burns all over my face?

 **Interviewer:** I’ve avoided commenting on them. That would be rude. However, I can promise you that there are top-notch medical facilities here, so those burns will be dealt with and healed soon enough.

 **Pidge Gunderson:** Good to know. I don’t quite know what happened, but I assume one of the three main ships used a cannon on the shield around the white ship. We were standing on the edge of the shield when it happened, trying to find a way inside. Then the cannon blast hit the shield and it was engulfed in fire for a few moments.

 **Interviewer:** Ouch. It burned you?

 **Pidge Gunderson:** Everyone but my dad, who was a few meters away on the bike. I knew to stop, drop, and roll, so I was mostly fine. The fire didn’t have a chance to do much damage, but my skin hurt like hell. Third-degree burns. We were lucky, though—the cannon blast completely shattered the shield around the white ship. Keith and Matt grabbed my dad, ditching the bike, and we limped our way over to the front gate. I’m still surprised it let us in.

 **Interviewer:** I’m glad you made it, Mr. Gunderson. Enough people died during the initial invasion—I can only imagine what the death toll is like now that the Galra have taken over Earth completely. It’s good to have one more person alive rather than dead.

 **Pidge Gunderson:** Where are we going, anyways? We can’t exactly go back to Earth right now.

 **Interviewer.** Hold that thought. The recovery team just responded to my message. I’m afraid I have some news about your father.

* * *

\--

 **MEDICAL REPORT** **  
** **HUNK GARETT** **  
** **07/25/74**

Subject is one of the few survivors of the bunker explosions. He has sustained major burns, lacerations, and a broken arm. He arrived unconscious via a rescue pod approximately two hours ago. I can’t believe they made him wait so long before seeing a doctor. My last patient only had a broken nose—I’m sorry, but she could have waited a few more turns before we dealt with her.

It is possible Mr. Garett has a concussion. There are large cuts on his forehead, and a visible bump is forming on the back of his skull. However, it should be noted that this is entirely speculation and we will only find out when he gains consciousness again.

It is HIGHLY recommended that he stays in a healing pod overnight. If not, he will most likely be assigned bedrest for a number of weeks.

For now, I’ll cross my fingers and hope there’s at least ONE other competent member on this med team.

Signed:

X:  Dr. Young 

* * *

\--

 **DIAGNOSTICS REPORT** **  
** **07/25/74**

The wormhole generator has been irreparably damaged. As projected, the farthest it could take us was to the outer rim of this galaxy. We landed near a planet the humans referred to as “Pluto”. Our map has been automatically updated with this new piece of information.

If another jump were attempted, there would be no telling where it would take us or whether or not we’d survive. We don’t have the materials necessary to repair the generator, so it has become a race against the remaining Galran battleship to Arus. Our jump got us ahead, but I predict that they will intercept us long before we reach our destination. Their ship is faster and ours is old and damaged.

Our weapons system is online. Our defenses are damaged.

Using this information, I have calculated the following:

 **TIME UNTIL ARRIVAL ON PLANET ARUS:**  
**95 DAYS/4 HOURS/39 MINUTES**

 **TIME UNTIL INTERCEPTION WITH GALRAN BATTLESHIP:**  
**64 DAYS/16 HOURS/20 MINUTES**

 **CHANCES OF SURVIVAL:**  
**27.6%**

Do not let this discourage you. I know in my heart that if anyone can lead us out of this, it’s you.

I love you, dearest daughter.


End file.
